Tag: The Girl Puzzle

On January 25th, 1885, The Pittsburg Dispatch published its first article by a new employee. In the week leading up to this date, a young woman called Elizabeth Cochrane had answered George Madden and Erasmus Wilson’s advertisement, seeking the author of a letter they’d received, signed only by a ‘Lonely Orphan Girl.’

Much later, both Wilson and Nellie Bly would reflect on this first meeting. Wilson recalled the young woman arriving, breathless from climbing the stairs. She appeared to him to be shy, but when she smiled her whole face brightened and he remembered she had beautiful teeth. For her part, Nellie was surprised by both Wilson and Madden. Wilson, author of the provoking Q.O. column whose views on a ‘women’s sphere’ had enraged her so much she’d put pen to paper, was not at all the cross old man of her imagination. Instead he was ‘a great big good-natured fellow who wouldn’t even kill the nasty roaches that crawled over his desk.’ And Madden, the editor, was a ‘mild-mannered, pleasant-faced boy,’ not at all the fierce, bushy-bearded man she’d imagined him to be.

Best of all, Madden didn’t simply want to publish the girl’s letter. He wanted more of her views and opinions. The result? Her first published article, The Girl Puzzle.

The article, staunch in its view that girls are just as good, if not smarter than boys, calls out for women’s working opportunities to be expanded, and sympathy and assistance offered to struggling women, instead of scorn or unconcern.

Aged 20, Elizabeth (or Nellie as she would become) held firm views that did not change as she grew older. She called for action, not just words, from advocates for women, directly suggesting that leaders of the women’s movement, ‘forgo their lecturing and writing and go to work; more work and less talk.’ No wonder George Madden found something he could not pass up in her first letter to the paper. As Wilson later recalled Madden saying:

‘She isn’t much for style, but what she has to say she says it right out regardless of paragraphs or punctuation. She knocks it off and it is just right too.’

A week later, with his editorial guidance, the Lonely Orphan had her first piece in the newspaper.

“Combining a historian’s rigor with a foodie ’s palate, Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled The Mandarin, evoking the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone’s, or chronicling the rise and fall of French haute cuisine through Henri Soulé’s Le Pavillon, food historian Paul Freedman uses each restaurant to tell a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. Freedman also treats us to a scintillating history of the then-revolutionary Schrafft’s, a chain of convivial lunch spots that catered to women, and that bygone favorite, Howard Johnson’s, which pioneered midcentury, on-the-road dining, only to be swept aside by McDonald’s. Lavishly designed with more than 100 photographs and images, including original menus, Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a significant and highly entertaining social history.” (Amazon blurb)

Why read Ten Restaurants that Shaped America?

I came across this book in research for The Girl Puzzle, my next novel, due out in the Spring. I was looking for some information about where my characters might eat out in New York in 1887 and again in 1920. Delmonicos, I thought. I need to know more about Delmonicos. Where was it? What was on the menu? Who went there and how much did it cost?

A little info… Delmonicos was established in as a pastry shop in 1827, opened by the Delmonico brothers, two young men originally from Ticino, an Italian part of Switzerland. John and Peter Delmonico (originally Giovanni and Pietro Del-Monico) had no formal training but by 1830 were successful enough to expand their pastry shop into the “Restaurant Français des Frères Delmonico”. Famous for high quality ingredients and expansive menu, Delmonicos various branches were visited by everyone from Oscar Wilde to Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of France.

Despite not being mentioned in the blurb on Amazon (odd since it is a picture of Delmonicos on the cover) I’ve loved this first section of the book. And while I’ve never heard of half the places mentioned above, I’m really looking forward to reading more and finding out about things that I don’t even know I don’t know about ;).